Norwalker has reputation for preservation architecture

Published 8:00 pm, Friday, September 26, 2008

If you'd asked him upon graduation from Norwalk High School in 1973, Craig Evan Barton wouldn't have been able to tell you what he wanted to do with his life.

But things crystallized for him at Brown University where he began working toward a career that has brought him recognition in the field of architectural preservation.

Reason enough for the associate professor and chairman of the Department of Architecture and Landscape Design at the University of Virginia to be installed on the NHS Alumni Association Wall of Honor during the annual dinner from 3:30 to 6:30 p.m. Sunday, Oct. 5, in Continental Manor.

"I could always shape objects with my hands, but it wasn't until I reached college that I stumbled onto the realization that I could really do something more," he said this week from his home in Charlottesville, Va.

Barton supervises a faculty of 32 serving 425 students in a department that is consistently ranked in the top 10 among the 150 accredited architectural programs in the nation.

Even after discovering his true talent, Barton took a circuitous route to his present position. While majoring in semiotics, the study of signs and symbols, at Brown, he simultaneously earned a bachelor's of fine arts degree in photography from the New York School of Visual Arts. He also studied photography and sculpture at the Rhode Island School of Design hard by the Brown campus.

There followed a three-year hiatus traveling in Europe and a year of working on boat charters in the Mediterranean. Architecture finally took precedence in 1982 with enrollment at the Columbia University School of Architecture. Three years later, he gained a position with the prestigious firm of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill which exposed him to a variety of assignments including the conversion of a London dock into a high scale use. He also directed the undergraduate architectural program at Columbia and managed its year abroad program in Paris.

After garnering a Loeb Fellowship to Harvard in 1994, he was offered the position at the University of Virginia where he has acquired a strong national reputation for preservation architecture, principally for his work in the African American communities of Selma and Montgomery, Alabama, and Meridian, Miss.

"My interest is to preserve the architectural history of those places through the buildings rather than to rely merely on the narrative history," he said.

Barton showed leadership early as president of his class at West Rocks Middle School where he also stood out as an athlete. He left a strong record at NHS where he was defensive halfback cornerback and linebacker in football and a sprinter on the track squad. He also sang in the choir. He played freshman football at Brown and lacrosse for two years before concentrating on the books. He has remained loyal to Brown since his appointment by President Ruth Simms to the Committee on Design which reviews all building projects at the Providence institution.

Raised at 42 Stonerop Road, he is the older son of Clifford Barton and the late Sylvia Landa Barton. His father, a Fall River, Mass., native, is well known locally as the longtime member and chairman of the Norwalk Redevelopment Agency who also had a distinguished career as an administrator in the Westport school system. His younger brother is a noted gourmet chef.

Barton and Marthe Rowen, also an architect and an alumna of Princeton University, celebrated their 20th wedding anniversary in July. They have two daughters, Juliana, 19-year-old sophomore at the University of Virginia and Nathalie, a 16-year-old high school student, and a son, Nicholas, 15, also a high school student. The Bartons have been collaborating in the design of commercial and residential buildings throughout their marriage and have a resume that includes buildings in New York and Virginia as well as Alabama and Mississippi.

Tickets at $50 each are available from Patricia Maiatico, Class of 1971, at (203) 852-7256; Barbara O'Connor, Class of 1971, at (203) 368-2223 or Patrick Spinola, Class of 1957, at (203) 853-4413 or by sending checks in the appropriate amounts to the NHSAA Wall of Honor Dinner, P.O. Box 493, Norwalk, CT., 06852-0493.